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| Subject: | DAILY PORT UPDATE | | Date: | Monday, August 11, 2008 | | Priority: | Normal | | Notice: | --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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URGENT INFORMATION: None
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PORT LIMITS/INFORMATION
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Maximum Depths - (Fresh)
Harbor Entrance - 47.0 ft
Main Channel - 45.0 ft
BERTH LIMITS/INFORMATION:
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Current maximum drafts allowed at berths:
Amerada Hess - Max draft of 38'00 if LOA is less than 650'; Max draft of
36'00 if LOA is 650'00 or greater Kinder Morgan - berth 1 - 40'00 Kinder
Morgan - berth 2 - 40'00 Kinder Morgan - berth 3 - TBA berth 4 - Max
draft 39'00, tide needed for anything deeper than 36'00 BP - TBA Wando
Terminal - Max draft 46'00 - Max BM 187'00 North Charleston Terminal -
Max 42'00 - Max BM 187'00 CST - Max draft 47'00 - Max BM 187'00
Per pilots - restrictions for Tanker movements:
Drafts of 36'00 or less may transit at anytime Drafts of 36'01 to 40'00 -
window: Start in 1 Hour before low water until
2 hours before high water
Drafts of 40'01 to 41'00 - window: start in 2 hours after low water until
2 hours before high water
Drafts of 41'01 to 42'00 - window: start in 3 hours after low water until
3 hours before high water
VESSEL TRAFFIC:
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BP - TUG RESOLVE & 650-3 IN EST OUT 1300/12TH
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FEDERAL, STATE & LOCAL FILING REQUIREMENTS:
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96 Hours - advance notice of arrival required by USCG
48 Hours - advance receipt of crew list by Immigration for any vessel
arriving from a foreign port, or arriving coast wise with detained crew.
24 Hours (minimum) - Foreign cargo must have manifest submitted to
Customs & Border Patrol AMS. Bond must be filed for Foreign flag vessels
or U.S. flag arriving with foreign cargo aboard.
24 Hours - advance notice to Pilots
24 Hours - advance fax of crew list and approved visitors required by
Terminal.
72 Hours - post port call, the Port Authority requires bill of lading
figures for all bulk cargo.
Port Security - All persons doing business within Port Authority property
must have security pass from SCPA.
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NEWS ARTICLES:
Perhaps the best way to explain the enigmatic Project SeaHawk, a
federally funded security task force with eyes all over the Port of
Charleston, is through its boats.
Photo Gallery
Project SeaHawk
Local security team is model for other seaports around nation
Enlarge photos | View gallery
There's one equipped with a radiological-detection device. Another
photographs the bottom of Charleston Harbor, searching for mines.
Then there's the sleek black speedboat for SWAT team situations. A dive
boat for search-and-rescue missions. And a few plain but peppy models for
twice-daily harbor patrols.
Although each boat is branded with the gold and navy blue SeaHawk
insignia, each also bears a more familiar name. Some belong to the
Charleston County Sheriff's Office, others to the Charleston, North
Charleston or Mount Pleasant police departments.
A pilot program established in 2003 as a long-term response to al-Qaida,
Project SeaHawk puts federal, state and local law enforcement together —
in the operations center, in weekly briefings and in boats. And while the
paramount task for officers attached to the project is preventing dirty
bombs from coming through Charleston's port, some days prove more
mundane.
Just last week, as a SeaHawk unit set out on an afternoon harbor patrol,
a man climbed over the fence on the Cooper River Bridge and pondered
jumping.
First on scene in a boat below, sheriff's deputy David White called back
to dispatch: "It's about to occur. ... Yeah he's definitely on this side
of the fence."
He asked his partners to ready an orange throw rope as he called ahead to
have paramedics on standby at Remley's Point.
By the time the man climbed back over the fence and into police custody,
boats from the Coast Guard and Mount Pleasant police, along with another
sheriff's unit, had arrived.
"Good response time," a sergeant called over.
From there, White steered the boat over to the State Ports Authority's
Wando Welch terminal and his unit's original task: staring over at the
container ships, up at the machinery and under the docks. What he and his
two partners looked for: "Things that weren't here yesterday," White said
without elaborating.
SeaHawk dwells in discretion.
The project doesn't advertise its location, and a green film covers each
window to deflect spy cameras. But for all its secrecy, SeaHawk wants to
share some of its accomplishments now, as its coffers empty and its
future becomes uncertain.
High-tech tools
Both here and in Washington, officials wonder what will happen to the
program, the first of its kind funded by Congress to fill in potentially
deadly security gaps.
Project SeaHawk operates through the Department of Justice, with the U.S.
Attorney's Office managing its finances. By next fall, its $46 million in
funds will run out, and the project will fall under the custody of the
Department of Homeland Security, an agency that didn't exist when SeaHawk
launched.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Shackelford, Project SeaHawk's director,
hopes the agency swap will mark little more than a formality.
"We plan to try to transition with as much of the capabilities created
here as possible," she said.
Those capabilities are the stuff of movies.
Rows of seats face a panel of flat screens in the operations center. Some
show GPS on dispatched SeaHawk vehicles and boats. Others play real-time
footage from around the port or key roadways. One shows the portal, an
impressive tool itself.
Click on any ship logged in the portal to see the vessel history and its
potential threat, where its crew is from and how each SeaHawk-affiliated
agency will check it out as it traverses local waters.
Before this technology, law enforcement at the port sometimes repeated
one another's chores — and sometimes overlooked a few.
SeaHawk also boasts an arsenal of detection tools, from an ion scanner to
find drugs and explosives to currency canines assigned to the Charleston
County Sheriff's Office.
Trained to smell large sums of cash, the county's first currency dog had
its trial run on a cruise ship. SeaHawk Deputy Director Frank Gutierrez
said the dog let all passengers off the ship until alerting on one man.
Despite his empty pockets, the cruise purser had currency ink all over
his hands.
Gutierrez said it's the little guy, easy to overlook, who could pose the
biggest threat.
A terrorist might be less likely to bring a nuclear weapon into town on
board a commercial ship when he instead could try to sneak one in on an
inconspicuous shrimp boat. While U.S. Customs and Border Protection scans
all containers coming off ships, it can't tackle every vehicle coming
through — and the danger could lie inside a family sedan. So SeaHawk
equipped a boat and a truck with radiological-detection equipment to fill
that gap.
But, Gutierrez stressed, "We don't drive it around town."
Port of call
There's one question SeaHawk officials can answer quickly and directly,
because it comes up often: Of all the nation's ports, why Charleston?
Residents know Charleston boasts an active commercial waterfront. It
ranks sixth in the nation by container volume, handling the equivalent of
1.8 million 20-foot-long steel boxes a year.
But what most locals might not know is that 40 percent of ammunition and
vehicles bound for the Middle East pass through here, Gutierrez said. And
nearly all the mine-resistant, armored-protected trucks — also known as
MRAPs — roll through Charleston.
The state's economy and the nation's security roost here. And so, every
Wednesday for a half-hour, representatives from 47 law-enforcement
agencies meet at SeaHawk headquarters. They share intelligence about both
international terrorism and local crimes.
"They're not focused on rapes and murders, but copper wire thefts. Things
that could tie to the port," Shackelford said.
The fruits of their work, according to Shackelford, are sometimes tough
to quantify. "It's hard to measure prevention," she said.
But ports around the country followed Charleston's model, and some of
Project SeaHawk's technology will become nationally streamlined under the
SAFE Port Act. Savannah began a SeaHawk spin-off called the Maritime
Interagency Center of Operations last year and, without its own funding,
uses some of the technology developed in Charleston.
That's a point of pride for SeaHawk's directors. Even if they can't tell
the general public much about what they do, they can say that they did it
all themselves.
"We're not a federal agency heading a federal mission," said Gutierrez,
sitting in a conference room glowing green with film-tinted light. "We're
South Carolinians working our port holistically."
Reach Allyson Bird at 937-5594 or abird@postandcourier.com.
FUTURE/ONGOING ISSUES:
08/12 - 1700 - PILOT COMMISSION MEETING
08/14 - 1400 - CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PORT BRIEFING & TOUR
09/17 - 0800 - MARITIME ASSOC OF SC BOARD MEETING
10/08 - 1800 - CWIT OYSTER ROAST
10/30 - TBA - PROPELLOR CLUB 75TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY
2013 - PROPOSED TIME FRAME FOR NEW PORT TERMINAL TO BE COMPLETED
CURRENT ISSUES - NONE
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CURRENT HURRICANE ALERT STATUS - 4 -
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TIDE INFORMATION (BASED FROM CUSTOMS WHARF):
Tides for Charleston (Customhouse Wharf) starting with August 11, 2008.
Day High Tide Height Sunrise Moon Time % Moon
/Low Time Feet Sunset Visible
M 11 High 3:58 AM 4.4 6:41 AM Set 1:34 AM 69
11 Low 10:11 AM 0.9 8:09 PM Rise 4:43 PM
11 High 4:56 PM 5.4
11 Low 11:15 PM 1.3
Tu 12 High 4:53 AM 4.5 6:41 AM Set 2:24 AM 77
12 Low 11:04 AM 0.8 8:07 PM Rise 5:32 PM
12 High 5:47 PM 5.6
W 13 Low 12:05 AM 1.1 6:42 AM Set 3:20 AM 85
13 High 5:45 AM 4.6 8:06 PM Rise 6:16 PM
13 Low 11:55 AM 0.7
13 High 6:36 PM 5.7
Th 14 Low 12:51 AM 0.9 6:43 AM Set 4:19 AM 91
14 High 6:35 AM 4.7 8:05 PM Rise 6:55 PM
14 Low 12:43 PM 0.5
14 High 7:20 PM 5.9
F 15 Low 1:33 AM 0.7 6:44 AM Set 5:20 AM 96
15 High 7:22 AM 4.9 8:04 PM Rise 7:30 PM
15 Low 1:29 PM 0.4
15 High 8:02 PM 6.0
Sa 16 Low 2:14 AM 0.5 6:44 AM Set 6:21 AM 99
16 High 8:06 AM 5.1 8:03 PM Rise 8:01 PM
16 Low 2:12 PM 0.3
16 High 8:40 PM 6.0
Su 17 Low 2:53 AM 0.3 6:45 AM Set 7:23 AM 99
17 High 8:47 AM 5.3 8:02 PM Rise 8:30 PM
17 Low 2:56 PM 0.2
17 High 9:17 PM 6.0
M 18 Low 3:31 AM 0.1 6:46 AM Set 8:25 AM 98
18 High 9:28 AM 5.5 8:01 PM Rise 8:58 PM
18 Low 3:40 PM 0.3
18 High 9:54 PM 5.9
Tu 19 Low 4:10 AM 0.0 6:46 AM Set 9:27 AM 95
19 High 10:09 AM 5.7 8:00 PM Rise 9:27 PM
19 Low 4:25 PM 0.3
19 High 10:32 PM 5.8
W 20 Low 4:50 AM 0.0 6:47 AM Set 10:31 AM 89
20 High 10:53 AM 5.8 7:59 PM Rise 9:58 PM
20 Low 5:14 PM 0.4
20 High 11:13 PM 5.6
Th 21 Low 5:33 AM 0.0 6:48 AM Set 11:37 AM 82
21 High 11:40 AM 5.9 7:58 PM Rise 10:32 PM
21 Low 6:06 PM 0.6
F 22 High 12:00 AM 5.3 6:48 AM Set 12:45 PM 73
22 Low 6:20 AM 0.0 7:56 PM Rise 11:12 PM
22 High 12:33 PM 6.0
22 Low 7:03 PM 0.8
Sa 23 High 12:53 AM 5.1 6:49 AM Set 1:55 PM 62
23 Low 7:13 AM 0.1 7:55 PM Rise 11:59 PM
23 High 1:33 PM 6.0
23 Low 8:07 PM 1.0
Su 24 High 1:54 AM 5.0 6:50 AM Set 3:04 PM 51
24 Low 8:13 AM 0.2 7:54 PM
24 High 2:40 PM 6.0
24 Low 9:15 PM 1.0
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MARINE WEATHER:
Today: Mostly sunny, with a high near 90. Southwest wind between 3 and 8
mph.
Tonight: Partly cloudy, with a low around 71. South wind between 3 and 6
mph.
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| | Notice posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 | |
Disclaimer
For quality assurance purposes please note well that while the above information is regularly vetted for accuracy it is not intended to replace the local knowledge or expertise pertaining to port conditions of our marine operations personnel. Port précis should always be verified by contacting the corresponding marine department of a particular location for the most up-to-date information.
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